What to do if you have been offered a Settlement Agreement?

A Settlement Agreement is a written agreement between an employee and employer which ensures that the employee will not pursue claims against their employer in court or a tribunal, often in return for the payment of a sum of money. However, if your employer offers you a Settlement Agreement then there are certain considerations that you need to make.

Shared Parental Leave – note for employers

As we explained in February, this month will see the first parents exercise their right to Shared Parental Leave (“SPL”). Where the expected week of child birth is on or after 5 April 2015, or where a child is placed for adoption on or after 5 April 2015, parents are entitled to “share” up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of shared parental pay.

The rules are fairly complex and there will inevitably be a bedding-in period during which employers, HR and legal professionals attempt to get to grip with the procedure. We have set out below, in brief, the procedure which an employee must follow and how the employer may respond.

Rollingsons successfully acts in complex surrogacy case

The Head of the Family Law Department at Rollingsons, Jeetesh Patel, recently successfully acted for the applicants in the case of R and S v T (Surrogacy: Service, Consent and Payments) [2015] at the Royal Courts of Justice on 13^th March 2015.

This was an application for a parental order from R and S, a couple in their early sixties who have been married for 38 years, concerning twins aged 18 months who were born following a surrogacy arrangement entered into by the applicants in a surrogacy clinic in Ukraine. Commercial surrogacy arrangements are permitted in Ukraine. The applicants had spent many years trying to conceive a child of their own.

Three key types of restrictive covenants

Restrictive covenants are used to protect business interests by preventing employees from competing with them after they leave. However, many employers don’t understand how they work and some employees may be unaware of how their terms could affect them post-employment. In this blog post we will look at the three most commonly used restrictive covenants.

Eye surgery and negligence claims

Laser eye surgery is more readily available than it has been in previous years. Laser eye surgery can be used to improve vision and reduce the need for glasses or contact lenses and surgery can take place to remove cataracts and repair retinas. However, while many treatments improve the vision and quality of life of patients, there are occasions where, due to negligence, mistakes are made. If this happens then a patient may be able to make a case for compensation.

Enforcing a restrictive covenant – what are the options?

In our recent article we looked at how restrictive covenants can be used to protect businesses from losing out when an employee leaves, provided that there is a legitimate business risk. Restrictive covenants must be expressly agreed to by the employee in their contract in order for them to be valid, but what happens when they leave and you suspect they may be breaking these conditions?

To stop an employee from breaching the conditions of the restrictive covenants in their contract an injunction could be obtained, provided that there is some evidence of on-going wrong-doing (i.e. proof the employee is breaking a particular covenant).

Misdiagnosis claims

When we visit a doctor or medical professional we trust their judgement and years of training in diagnosing our health problems. However, occasionally they fail to meet these expectations and either miss signs of illness or diagnose the condition as something else.

Misdiagnosis can be summarised in two ways. The first is when an illness or condition is not diagnosed at all. The second occurs when the wrong diagnosis is made.

An example of the first type of misdiagnosis could be when a patient has visited their GP with stomach problems, but their concerns are dismissed and a diagnosis is not made, only to later discover they have a form of cancer.